


How To Be Happy

by momentia



Series: How To Be Happy [1]
Category: Agents of Cracked
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentia/pseuds/momentia
Summary: Trigger warnings: Just to be safe, let’s say “everything."  And general poor taste.  (It has this much in common with the canon.)





	How To Be Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: Just to be safe, let’s say “everything." And general poor taste. (It has this much in common with the canon.)

The east coast is pretty much just farmland between Manhattan and Orlando.

“Why don’t they build cities?” Michael asks Dan after their balloon touches down.  “Like, out of lincoln logs, or legos?  I am great at legos.”

“You can’t create an entire city comprised of surprisingly anatomically detailed lego sculptures of celebrities, Michael.  Cities have infrastructure, and—”

“Oh, infrastructure.”  Michael looks around, shields his eyes from the sun.  “Not a lot of infrastructure in these here corn fields.”

“They’re soybeans, and I think that was just a good guess, I don’t think you actually know what infrastructure means.”

“Sure I do.”  And then Michael takes off running, and Dan doesn’t catch up until Michael is stopped by the electric fence standing between him and Farmer John’s goats.

*

“Folks  ’round these parts had enough problems before you brought that boy home with you.”

Dan’s father, ladies and gentlemen.

“Michael’s harmless,” Dan lies.  Michael has already destroyed Dan’s mother’s chicken coop and, somehow, constructed a still in a neighbor’s barn.  Not that Dan entirely begrudges him the latter, because liquor stores are few and far between around here and Dan’s developed a bit of a drinking problem.  If Michael hasn’t killed Dan yet, his moonshine probably won’t.

His father shakes his head.  “He get trampled by a horse when he was young?”

“There are other reasons some people are different, I’ve told you that.  You’ve had this vendetta against horses for as long as I can remember!”

“So it’s inbreeding then?”

“No!  No.  Michael’s Michael,” Dan says, shaking his head.  He can hear the defeat in his voice.  “It’s easier to just accept him.”

“I don’t like it,” his father says, then starts up his combine.  He’s been ending conversations with Daniel that way for at least fifteen years now.

Daniel’s mother doesn’t exactly like Michael, either, but she’s protective of him, same as she is of everyone.

“I don’t think you should be taking advantage of him,” she says softly, Daniel’s first evening home.  She hands him a big glass of lemonade as if to soften the blow.

A strangled laugh escapes his throat.  “I wish I could explain to you how wrong you are about, well, everything.  Michael does not do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

She’s still wearing a worried frown.  “But, sweetie, he acts like Gary’s boy, the one who got trampled by the—”

“Enough with the horse hate!”

“They poo right on the road, Danny.”

“They are beautiful, noble, intelligent creatures,” Dan mutters sullenly.  He’s been home for twelve hours and he feels as petulant and scolded as he ever did as a child.

And then his dad comes back to the house, eyes Dan and his mother at the kitchen table.  “What’s got you so upset, boy?  Christ, you spend two years on the west coast and come back a faggot, and now you’re crying at the dinner table.”

“Not actually crying,” Daniel says.  It’s one of his biggest faults, that he still bothers to push back, but a man has to have some dignity.

Unless that man is Michael.  Michael, who doesn’t seem to understand that overalls are supposed to go over something else.  Michael, who is still eyeing the neighbors’ livestock even after Dan told him three times that no matter what Michael thinks he knows about the east coast, it’s not okay to fuck animals here, either.

Michael, who either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the smell of silage, and spoons Daniel on that first, entirely too cold night back in the grain silo.

Maybe dignity is overrated.

*

Dan is trying very hard to figure out a life here.  Faking your death and being subsequently undocumented doesn’t exactly make it easy to find employment.  Being college-educated in a community that values physical endurance and doesn’t have much room for “book-learnin’” doesn’t help.

“It’s because you’re so small,” Michael tells him.  “Just, like, tiny.  And everyone else here is strong and can lift bulls over their heads.”

“No one can do that,” Dan says.  He’s distracted, circling want ads in what passes for a newspaper around here.  “I could get my CDL, drive a milk truck.  But I’d have to learn how to drive again first.”

“Oh, I could teach you.”

“I’m not comfortable with that.”

“That’s not what you said last night—when our dicks touched!”

“What?  That’s not—no.  That was a complete non sequitur.  And actually, that is exactly what I said last night.  I told you that I’m not comfortable with the fart noises every time we try to…”  He trails off for want of a verb.

“It’s called tradition, Daniel.”

“It’s not.”  He hands Michael the comics and folds the rest of the paper.  Nothing promising today, not that he’s surprised.

“Hey,” Michael says, nudging Dan’s shoulder, “there’s always sex slavery, right?”

“You’re trying to be comforting, so I’m just going to say thank you, I think.”

Michael’s smile is so genuine and so proud that Dan finds himself smiling back.

*

Sometimes Dan thinks about the man he killed to get the job at Cracked, the maybe-a-man he killed to keep it, the men he’s watched die.

But not often.

Down that road lies madness.

Just look at Sarge.

*

Daniel takes Michael to a neighboring dairy and buys him real, fresh butter, a big block of it wrapped in wax paper with the weight written on by hand.  Michael takes a bite out of it the way a normal person would bite into a chocolate bar.

“This is so good.  Dan, you should have some.”

“That’s okay.”

“But it’s so good.”  Michael makes a distinctly sexual noise, earning himself a worried glance from the Amish woman running the counter.  “Dan, I would fuck this butter.  Unless your puritanical east coast laws don’t allow that, either?”

It seems easiest to just manhandle Michael out the door, since Daniel’s pretty much too mortified for speech.  The bell over the door rings as they step outside, and Daniel just shakes his head.  “Thank you, Michael.”

“I should be thanking you, Dan, this butter is—”

“Wasn’t actually thanking you!  Now I can never show my face at Byler’s Dairy again, and they have the most amazing vanilla ice cream.”  He sighs wistfully.

“Vanilla?”  Michael laughs and takes another bite of butter.  “That’s so Daniel.”

“Yes.  Yes, it is.”

A week passes before Michael gives Dan a gift in return: an absolutely stunning Arabian stallion, jet-black and strong and noble and beautiful and—

“I love you, Michael.”

It’s the first time he’s said it, and Michael completely misses it.  “His name is Osama, actually, but he loves you too.”

“That is not his name.  That’s offensive, frankly.”  Daniel takes a deep breath, torn between excitement about the horse, worry about the horse’s origins, and wanting to attempt a grown-up conversation with Michael.  A conversation about feelings, not about horse thievery, although both are probably overdue.

In order to avoid jail time and—because who knows in this economy—the possibility of a public hanging, Dan opts to focus first on the stolen horse.  “Where’d you get him?”

“Osama.”

“No.”

“I bought him.”

“Whose credit card did you steal?”

“Yours.”

“No, I shredded my cards, along with every other document with my name or yours, because as much as I try to forget this in the course of my daily life, there are supernatural beings who will kill you if they find out you’re alive.”

“Because I am some sort of magic, right?”

Dan smiles, though he doesn’t mean to.  He’s angry, and confused, and he still has no idea how Michael actually procured this horse.

Michael smiles back and gives Dan a great big hug.  Dan relaxes into the embrace because he really is trying to be happy, dammit, and then it’s over, Michael pushes him away and shows Dan Dan’s own wallet, swiped in the course of the hug.

“This is the card I stole!” he says proudly, shoving it in Dan’s face.  It’s a Visa Platinum card bearing the name Hans Diamond.

Dan grabs the card.  “Credit card fraud, Michael?  I thought we agreed to misdemeanors only.”

“It was a goodbye gift from Sarge before he left.  He said to tell you that there’d always be money in an untraceable pension account if we ever needed anything.”

“And you didn’t feel the need to mention this before you threw out the idea of sex slavery?”  Dan shakes his head.  “And why did Sarge assume that I’d bring you with me?”  Michael just smiles that condescending, too-happy smile he gives when Dan is being the stupid one, and Dan sighs.  “And how was that in my wallet all this time?”

“You ask too many questions, Daniel.  Why don’t you take Osama for a spin?”

“Because his name is not Osama, you don’t take horses ‘for a spin,’ and.”  He coughs.  “I’ve never actually ridden a horse.”

“Hmm.”  Michael cocks his head to the side and gives Dan a long, intense stare.

“What?” Dan asks, when it becomes too much even in a lifetime of too much.

“I don’t know what this feeling is.  I’ve never felt it before.  Sadness?  Pity?  Nausea?  Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.”

Dan feels it, too, now that Michael mentions it.  “Sorry about that, buddy.”

“All’s forgiven, my friend.”  Michael claps him on the back, too hard and oblivious to it.  “That’s why God makes alcohol.”

“You make alcohol,” Dan corrects.  But if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, they’re mostly the same thing to him anymore.

*

The sex is always an adventure.  Not necessarily in a good way, but Dan can’t imagine ever in a million years getting bored with Michael.

Even with as awesome as Michael believes Michael is, he seems skeptical.  “I’ve had sex with probably a million people, Dan.  And yes, before you ask, that is counting only the actual, legal people.”

“Not what I was about to question about that statement, but please, continue.”

“Thank you.  As I was saying, I don’t understand how you could be satisfied with just one person.  Even if that person’s me.”

“It’s all I can do to keep up with you, Michael.”

“You really can’t.”

“Okay.  Then maybe it’s because I love you.”

“I mean, I’m ready to go again in ten minutes, and you’re all, ‘Michael, get off of me, I have to bale cows and milk hay in a few hours, stop trying to put your dick in my ear.’”

“It’s obviously not going to fit.  I don’t know why you insist on trying.”

“You never know.  One of these days, when you least expect it, pop!  Dick in the ear.”

“Always a pleasure,” Dan murmurs.  Unlike Michael, he can occasionally recognize a lost cause.  If he couldn’t before, he sure as hell can now.

Michael, though.  The eternal optimist.  He tugs on Dan’s earlobe, peers inside.  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

*

It’s a Tuesday afternoon when Michael decides to take the state bar exam.

“But don’t you have to have sound ethics?  And be legally alive?”

“That might be what the rules say.”  Michael’s tone clearly implies what he thinks of the rules.  “But my biological father is an omnipotent being.”

“Two really good words there, Michael.  Someone’s been using his flashcards.”

“Thank you.  Anyway, I figure he can pull a few strings.  And then I’ll have the comfortable life of a country lawyer, settling property disputes about chickens and winning billion-dollar lawsuits against whatever actually has money out here.”

“Good luck with that.”

Of course, Michael passes the bar on the first try.  He seems to be a bit of a savant when it comes to the law, too.

“Now I gotta get a white suit and a mint julep glass.  Do you need special glasses for mint juleps?  Oh my god, glasses, I should get a little pair of glasses so I look smart.  Never mind, I can just use yours.”

“I told you after the last broken pair, never again.”

Michael sighs, but he brightens almost immediately when the next thought comes into his head.  “You can be my paralegal!”

“No.”  Dan shakes his head and bats away the hand currently trying, badly, to sneak his glasses off his nose.  “I don’t think my already fragile self-esteem could handle the effects of officially being your subordinate.”

“What?  Is that some kind of sex thing?”

“Not in this case, no.”

“Oh.  Hey, Dan, is a mint julep just mouthwash and vodka?”

When Dan starts to laugh, he thinks that this is it.  This is the breaking moment, the final bout of hysteria that he will never come back from, because he thought once that he had at least some vague idea of where his life was going, or at least that it would take him away from here, and now he’s on his parents’ front porch with a sore ear and no job prospects and a Michael.

But it passes.  The laughter tapers off to a smile, and he just shakes his head.  “God help me, but I think I’m happy.  Michael, I love you.”

Michael smiles, somehow soft, almost shy.  “No one’s ever said that to me before, Dan.”

“Actually—”

“I love you, too.”

It really is the first time anyone’s ever said that to Dan, and even though he’s not entirely sure that Michael truly gets what it means, he believes him.

And that makes him happy.


End file.
